Frontier Industry Advisor- Telecommunications

Overview

Are you passionate about telecommunications industry transformation for the Frontier AI era? The United States telecommunications sector is undergoing a fundamental shift in how operators grow, operate, monetize their networks, meet regulatory expectations, and serve customers. US carriers are moving from experimentation to enterprise scale transformation, reengineering the core business processes that run the industry, automating the network toward autonomous operations, and rethinking how they create value beyond connectivity. Microsoft's Frontier Industry Advisory team is at the heart of that innovation, working directly with telecom business leaders to rewrite the playbook while staying grounded in the mission and business objectives of the industry.

This role is fundamentally about leading one of the largest telecommunications operators in the United States, together with its partner ecosystem, into the AI era. Connectivity alone is commoditizing. The operators that thrive over the next decade will be those that transform how work actually gets done, end to end across the operational and business process landscape, and that make AI a structural capability rather than a collection of pilots. You will be the person who helps them see that path, believe it, and execute it.

The value you create is measured in the business: cycle time reduction in order to activate, cost to serve reduction in trouble to resolve, revenue leakage recovery in usage to cash, faster concept to market for new products, and measurable workforce redeployment toward higher value work.

As a Frontier Industry Advisor on the Frontier Industry Advisory team, based in the United States, you will partner with one of the top three US telecommunications companies to define and execute its AI led transformation agenda. You will originate industry led business opportunities and executive conversations that connect business outcomes to Microsoft cloud, data, AI, security, and partner capabilities, and you will shape and close the large, complex, multi year deals that carry those agendas. The primary focus of the role is telecommunications, with a secondary component covering media and entertainment, including broadcasters, streaming platforms, content and advertising businesses, reflecting the reality that major US carriers operate significant media and advertising assets within their groups.

Microsoft is deeply engaged with the industry's leading standards and trade bodies, TM Forum and the GSMA, and this role is expected to be an active participant in that ecosystem. You will bring TM Forum frameworks (eTOM, ODA, Open APIs, Autonomous Networks maturity levels) and GSMA initiatives (Open Gateway and network APIs, industry AI and sustainability programmes, operator working groups) into customer conversations, and represent Microsoft's industry point of view back into those communities.

Responsibilities

Business Process Transformation

Leads business process transformation conversations grounded in TM Forum reference frameworks (eTOM, SID, Open Digital Architecture, and Open APIs), using them as a shared language with the customer to map the current operating model, identify where value leaks, and design the target state. Aligns transformation designs to the ODA component model and to GSMA Open Gateway network API standards where service exposure and monetization are in scope, so that redesigned processes and productized network capabilities are interoperable across the industry rather than bespoke to one operator.

Works with the operator to reengineer core process domains end to end rather than optimizing in isolation, spanning operations (assurance, fulfillment, billing and revenue management, resource and service management), strategy, infrastructure and product, and enterprise management. Identifies where AI, agents, and automation collapse process steps, remove handoffs, and shift work from human in the loop to human on the loop.

Connects process transformation to the underlying architecture, including data foundations, OSS/BSS modernization, API exposure, and ODA aligned componentization, so that redesigned processes are executable and not just documented. Champions process simplification and standardization as a prerequisite to scaled AI, helping the customer avoid automating broken processes.

Autonomous Networks

Acts as a leading voice on autonomous networks, helping the operator define its ambition against the TM Forum Autonomous Networks maturity levels (L0 to L5), assess where it is today, and build a credible, staged path toward higher levels of autonomy across RAN, transport, core, and cloud domains. Draws on TM Forum Catalyst projects, industry benchmarks, and GSMA operator programmes to ground the roadmap in what peers are actually achieving, and contributes Microsoft's learnings back into those forums.

Shapes opportunities across the autonomy stack, including closed loop assurance, intent based operations, self configuration, self healing and self optimization, predictive maintenance, anomaly detection and root cause analysis, network digital twins, energy optimization, capacity and traffic forecasting, and AI agents operating within network operations centers.

Helps the customer work through the hard parts that determine whether autonomy scales: data quality and topology models, observability, guardrails and trust boundaries, human oversight and escalation design, safety and rollback, regulatory and outage reporting obligations, and change management for network operations teams. Connects that ambition to measurable outcomes such as reduced mean time to restore, fewer truck rolls, lower operating cost per site, improved network availability and customer perceived quality, energy savings, and the ability to run a larger, more complex network without a proportional increase in headcount.

Leading Customers and Partners into the AI Era

Serves as a trusted advisor to operator executives on what the AI era means for their business, not only how to apply AI to existing operations, but how competitive advantage, cost structures, workforce models, partner ecosystems, and revenue mix change as AI matures. Helps leaders see where their current model becomes less relevant, and where new relevance can be built.

Builds and evangelizes a forward looking industry point of view: the operator as an AI enabled digital service provider, the monetization of network capability through APIs and edge, the role of the telco in the national and enterprise AI value chain, sovereign and regulated AI infrastructure, and the shift from selling connectivity to selling outcomes. Leads partners into the same transition, working with global systems integrators, network equipment vendors, and independent software vendors to build joint capability and co create industry solutions.

Represents Microsoft in industry bodies and standards communities, including TM Forum (Catalysts, working groups, ODA and Autonomous Networks initiatives, Digital Transformation World) and the GSMA (Open Gateway, industry AI and network API workstreams, Mobile World Congress and regional events), building Microsoft's credibility as an industry player, shaping emerging standards in directions that serve customers, and using those platforms to convene operators and partners around a shared AI agenda.

Large and Complex Deal Shaping

Originates, shapes, and helps close large, complex, multi year transformation deals: engagements that span multiple business units, technology domains, and partners, involve significant customer commitment, and typically require executive sponsorship on both sides.

Constructs the commercial and business value narrative for these pursuits, covering the outcome hypothesis, the baseline, the value at stake, the phasing, the risk profile, and the investment case that a CFO and a board will accept. Works backward from the customer's own strategic and financial commitm